Kubota Diesel Do It!

As most of you are probably aware, I'm on a quest for a diesel engine to mess with, and maybe power a project. My original intent was to get a little air cooled, single cylinder like a Yanmar L100. It's an industrial OPE engine, Fearless has a similar model powering his Suburban.

So, I scoured CL and Kijiji. I placed want ads. I found... SQUAT.

Then, I found more than I bargained for, but I got so excited at the concept, I could not stop myself. So here she is: a Kubota Z400.



Lovely little engine. 2 cylinder, 400cc. Liquid cooled, rated at 10hp, potential for a lot more. TORQUE, dog! I did not get an alternator or radiator with it. No problem, I'm resourceful.

Beast fired right up, but I only ran it for a few seconds without a cooling system. Meantime, I have decided it's going to power my MULEII build. Stay tuned!

Alot more? 40psi? Triple turbos? Black smoke that can fog out the sun?

LOL, jk, im interested as to what youre up to.

For now, the plan is pretty simple. I have my hands full, adapting it to the MII project. Later on down the road, I will work on performance enhancements. In the beginning, probably just jacking up the governor a few hundred RPM. A turbo is not in the immediate plans, but possible.

if you want a little more power, turn the fuel pump up a little bit, the kubota we have, the previous owner turned the pump up and i guess it made a big difference. It rolls coal too lol

I need to get a short vid of the 484 IH we have, it rolls some coal, BTW its N/A

Mule2 needs hydraulics!

Soooooo...

I scored a rebult, 62A Delco 10si alternator for this pig, and been working on adapting it. To fit it, I had to cut about 1/2" off the bottom alternator ear, to bring the pulleys into alignment. On the block, I drilled and retapped the bottom bolt boss to 3/8"-16 to avoid having to sleeve a metric bolt for the larger hole in the alternator.

Up top, I fabbed an adjustable bracket from 2 peices of 1/4" steel plate. I had intended to cut the curves with an old jigsaw (not using my good one for doing trim work at work) and about 30 second in, smoke started coming out of it... OOPS! So, I ended up shaping the whole thing with my grinder.

The bracket bolts to the thermostat housing for the top bolt, and the bottom bolt goes right through the housing into the cylinder head. She's solid...

Next move is to mock the rest of the cooling system into place so I can do a long test run. There will be a video on that. Maybe tomorrow.

great progress. The devil is in the details...

I always wanted one of these motors

turn up fuel pump straight pipe and roll some coal!!